Sunday, October 26, 2008

Changing Disabilities To Possibilities

My K12 Online Conference presentation, Changing Disabilities to Possibilities - Using the MacGyver Approach is coming up this week. Here is a peek at the 2 minute teaser.

Learn in the Comfort of Your Own Home or School

Are you listening to the conversations? Going on right now is a free online conference for k - 12 educators. Check it out at the K12 Online Conference 2008. Listen anytime, anywhere. Listen by yourself or with your colleagues. Grab that cup of coffee and chose from among 40 different presentations (all 20 minutes in length). Let me know which ones you enjoyed...

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Making it Count!

On my previous post, Jeff Utecht left a comment which I rejected accidentally when I was moderating it. My only defense was that it was way too early in the morning and I didn't have enough coffee. At any rate, I copied the comment from my email and pasted it here...
The best part about moving parent communication online is that you can track who visits and reads the website. We never could do that when we sent the paper copy home in student backpacks. A great way to 'sell' teachers on moving to communicating digitally is to embed a stat counter on the site so they can see that people are visiting and reading.
I can't agree with him more. It is so motivating to see that people actually are reading what you put out.

I use clustrmaps as a quick visual. This world map gives you a global glimpse of who is stopping by your site. I also use stat counter. It gives me information I didn't know I wanted. I can see how many people visited on a given day, what cities they came from and how much time they spent on the site.  

Jeff suggests Google Analytics. It lets you know how many hits on your site are within your school boundaries, for example.

All these programs are free.  Yes, data is useful, motivating and fun!